Supersized Group

[Old_school_overlord]

Because I can't say no to friends, I've had my group steadily grow since I started this - my first d&d campaign - until now I have 8 players.

Their spread between 7th and 8th level ( I started em at 6th) and last session one got killed by a Dire Shark, which had seemed like a suitable (if tough) encounter for 6 characters but which I now see was probably unsuitable because of its style of attacks - bite & swallow - being very strong against a larger number of weak opponents.

Does anyone have any advice for my on balancing encounters for such a large party?

Thanks

 

[Darklone]

Easy. Don't put them up against single monsters of appropriate CR, use small groups of weaker monsters. Or huge hordes of weak monsters (my biggest battle which was rolled featured more than 1200 combatants).

I like big groups, but if they don't work together (with lots of Shield Other spells) battles against one single monster means one or two dead PCs even if they win it without any problems.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I agree with Darklone - I also have 8 PC's, and 3 of them have the Leadership feat. I tend to build my encounters by doubling the number of monsters, essentially building two EL X encounters and slapping them together. They're 12th level right now, IIRC, and so I'd use two CR 12 monsters before upping the CR of one monster for just the reason you encountered.

I also personally like having lots of baddies running around - some of whom may be very weak, but serve to distract and eat up actions by the PC's. In my last session, the PC's had eight or so Dark Creepers running around (CR 3 with 5 hp). These little guys couldn't do much by themselves, but they could provide flanking, grab important unattended items and run off with them, call for help, etc.

 

[Old_school_overlord]

8+ 3 with leadership feat ?! *GakK!*

You must have a biiiig battlemat Charle.

Thanks for the advice, to help with running large groups, is there anywhere I can get downloads of monster tokens? At the moment I use pennies with scraps of paper glued on that say "Sahuagin"...its not the best.

 

[billd91]

8+ 3 with leadership feat ?! *GakK!*

You must have a biiiig battlemat Charle.

Thanks for the advice, to help with running large groups, is there anywhere I can get downloads of monster tokens? At the moment I use pennies with scraps of paper glued on that say "Sahuagin"...its not the best.

Fiery Dragon has some relatively inexpensive PDFs of counters:
http://shop.fierydragon.com/category.sc?categoryId=5

They used to have a couple of CD products - Counter Collection Digital - but I can't find a product link to it any more. I got copies and have been printing my own chits ever since. I print them on my work color photocopier, cut them out, and then I can write on them to my heart's content to keep track of hit points and other damage.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Why not just open up Word, create a table so the tokens you need are exactly the right dimension, and print up your own? You can usewhatever font you want, whatever color you want, etc. And most printers will handle a good quality cardstock that is sturdy but also able to be cut easily. The nice thing aboutthisis that if you are using a battlemap, you can make the table cells precisely the right dimension to fit on the battlemap. [If you're using a hex-map ... it's a little harder, sorry. ]

 

[frankthedm]

8+ 3 with leadership feat ?! *GakK!*

You must have a biiiig battlemat Charle.

Thanks for the advice, to help with running large groups, is there anywhere I can get downloads of monster tokens? At the moment I use pennies with scraps of paper glued on that say "Sahuagin"...its not the best.

It's begining to look a lot like fish men...


If you like video games, you'll love these counters. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=225315

 

[Old_school_overlord]

...everywhere I go,

from the minute I came to town,

and started to look around,

I thought these ill-bred people's gill slits showed.




Thats a great resource Frank, thanks!

 

[frankthedm]

Thats a great resource Frank, thanks!

I take requests too!